A microphone of MEMS design is known from U.S. Pat. No. 5,490,220 A by way of example. In order to produce such a microphone, a thin-film construction is produced on a substrate, said thin-film construction comprising at least one diaphragm which is embedded into the thin-film construction and, in a later method step, is freed from its embedding by virtue of the layers that envelope or enclose being removed by etching.
In this case, the functional principle is based on a capacitor having a capacitance that varies with the vibrating diaphragm. Accordingly, alongside the diaphragm a further conductive layer is also provided as counterelectrode, which can be realized within the same layer construction.
The signal processing of such an MEMS microphone requires integrated circuits in the form of semiconductor components, known MEMS microphones typically being incorporated into a common package and thus constituting hybrid components. A further possibility consists in integrating an MEMS microphone together with an IC component in a module. In all cases, however, microphones are obtained which require a relatively large silicon or semiconductor area and which can therefore be housed or incorporated into a package only in a complicated manner.